Oceans
by d00mfuzzball
Summary: FanNoWriMo. When a decades long war raging an ocean away starts to threaten the stability Konoha and Suna have worked so hard to achieve, the two villages send a combined team of elite ninja to intervine, led by Lee, who may know more than he lets on.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N This fic is being written for FanNoWriMo. So yes, this will be a chapterfic, updated hopefully steadily through July. It's not being edited very much right now, I promise to go back and fix everything in August. So, warnings, uh, this will contain both het and yaoi pairings, wierd ones, because I like wierd pairings. Also this will most likely get ridiculously violent as it progresses. In the meantime, it's pretty safe, so uh, enjoy the intro, I hope? Also, I promise the whole thing won't be in this same wierd style. But it'll crop up from time to time.**

Their clothes were ragged and there were holes in their shoes when they came in sight of the village gates. They came hollow cheeked and bone thin, with dirt in their hair. And Fleas. And they spoke no language that the guards understood. They came shambling and weary eyed into the shadow of the leaf village, four of them and a baby in a frightened, hope filled group. Under the grey cloaked dawn they came into the village exactly as they had left their own, an ocean away.

Few villagers walked the streets at those small hours but the guards, one who led the travelers wordlessly, one who ran ahead to the main administrative building . Those other shinobi and civilians already awake took little notice of the group. They had all seen refugees before. When they arrived the Hokage was waiting for them. They were led down long hallways to her office, where she was seated pensive at her desk with her fingers threaded and her chin resting atop them and her sake bottle for once left to the side, and there was food laid out for them when they arrived. No one spoke. But the travelers fell to the cold rice and dried meats when long minutes of silence and weeks of hunger had convinced them that there was no trap. The Hokage watched, and gestured to her assistant. As the medi-nin left the room, the baby began to cry. Wailing a sound thin and grey as the dawn that made to follow her to the street, but ended at the door. Autumn had settled over the village. The sun was weary, and red leaves danced down the near deserted walkways and between buildings. Shizunes didn't run. This was not the first group of refugees to make it to their gates, and would not the last. Survivors had shown up with increasing frequency over the last several years. Her feet took her to the far side of town, past the hospital, and Ichiraku ramen, to where the buildings started to stoop, and clotheslines hung in the narrow space between houses.

The sun was nearly full in the sky and slanting coldly through the window behind the Hokages desk when she returned. The sake bottle back in its familiar place, and half empty. She did not return alone. Two men and their wives watched with anxious eyes the young shinobi that followed at her heels. The baby was asleep. For a while, they were left to themselves save for the Hokage, who said nothing, and the newcomer, a fresh Jounin with too much eyebrow and more concern. He spoke to them in their language. He told them that his name was Lee, that he knew the country they had come from and the ocean they had crossed, and he asked them why they had crossed it. And they told him. And later he would tell the Hokage what had been said. To tell their story left the travelers exhausted and heart sick. But it was with a sort of desperate relief they made their plea. They waited still and silent huddled together while he related all they had said to Tsunade. She looked sick, and worried, and then she looked calm. She took one last drought from her cup, and let it set with a chink on the desk. She thanked them, and promised sanctuary. The young Jounin translated. There was a tap at the closed door and more Jounin appeared. She nodded to them, and to the translator, and he bowed himself out the door, and if anyone noticed her hand touch his shoulder as they passed each other they either thought, or said nothing of it. Later, he would return to the travelers with more questions, which they would not want to answer, but would anyway. For now, they were escorted to the hospital, and given beds to sleep in, clean clothes and a place to bathe. There was a bottle with formula for the baby, and a blanket, sky blue and full of fuzz. The travelers were to full of fatigue and relief to be grateful, or even overwhelmed. Two went to their baths and tier beds without a word. The others straight to their beds. Sakura took the baby, once it's mother was asleep. It was sickly, and needed to be examined.

By evening, four runners had been sent barreling from the gates with scrolls sealed in wax and chakra and stamped with the Konoha emblem. Shizune sat in silence with her teacher, her watched them from the window in her office. She didn't ask where they were going or why. As the sun sank and turned red, Lee sat alone in the woods, back against a well worn practice dummy, and didn't train. He was thinking about fleas, and tattered clothes, and the baby. He itched sympathetically, pulling an imaginary insect from his hair.


	2. Chapter 2

_His mother was in the kitchen. It was spring, and the air that blew in through the open door was warm and sweet, like her voice, as she swayed carefree in the small room singing. A song the words to which had never been penned, but passed down voice to voice , about mountains and snow. He was five, and he sat at her bare feet with his back against the counter and listened to her sing while she worked. She was kneading dough for wheat flour noodles. Her hands were white and now and then a little shower of flour spilled from the table and colored her apron, or the floor, or him. He could hear his father in the yard. They had a vegetable garden. _

_"Lee." She said, after a while. "Go help your father." He nodded, stood, and headed out the door. From the garden they could still hear her singing. His father was as large a man as his mother was petite, and to some it was likely strange to see him toiling away amongst herbs and lettuce and snow peas. Soil under his close bitten fingernails. Lee came out into the yard and sat in the dirt next to his father, who ruffled is hair and said the peas were ready to pick, and mother could use them at dinner tonight, and that he should help. Suddenly all excitement Lee leapt up and ran back into the house. When he came out again it was with a basket nearly the size of himself. He sat next to his father for an hour, pulling pods until the basket was a quarter full, and listened to his father talk about soil, and growing things, and the farm he had lived on as a child. Lee could care less about the proper time of year to plant potatoes, but he liked the low mellow of his fathers voice, and cracking pods to eat the tiny seeds out of them, and digging for worms. By and by they ran out of ripe pods to pick, and the sun grew high and hot in the cloudless sky. His friends came running down the dusty road to his house, and leapt up on the gate and called to him. It was hot, and they were going swimming. They were siblings. A boy his age, and a sister, Lan, who was seven. His father shooed him away and he ran after them on the road and they stopped and waited for him to catch up. _

_Together the three of them made their way through the village, picking up sticks to drag in the dust and kicking stones as they went, past the houses and other children kicking a ball in the street, past the grocery store and a flower shop, out and way from the main road to a place in the river where the water stilled and the bottom was more sand than stone. They sat on a sun warmed rock and giggled with their feet in the water. It was cold with melted snow coming down from the mountains. They dared each other to jump in first, and when no one would Lan pushed him and he came up shivering and sputtering for air. She and her brother laughed as though their lungs would burst. She stopped abruptly when he grabbed a handful of her dress and se toppled in after. They both pulled the other boy in while he yelled and splashed. They splashed back and soon were engrossed in a wild water fight, shrieking and laughing, and slipping on smooth stones. And they each one because by the time they'd tired themselves out each was just as thoroughly wet as the next. They stretched out on the bank to dry. Lan picked wildflowers to bring home. Lee and Jian fenced with sticks, until Lan made them stop. The sun was beginning to set by the time they started back. Lan and Jian lived with their parents and some cousins on a farm not far outside the village. They left him there with plans to play again tomorrow. _

_They wouldn't._

_Late at night while the stars winked in and out behind drifting clouds there was movement in the hills around the village. Horse hooves churning through the river where they had played, snapping a stick that _

_had served as a sword. Dozens of horses, with dozens of riders. They galloped three abreast down the red dirt roads with fire and singing blades. They rode in silence, and threw torches to the roofs of the out skirting famers. Here and there riders stayed behind, to run down any that tried to flee the burning buildings. The rest rode on, bloodlust humming in their veins and weapons thrumming in their hands to the rhythm of the horses hooves. They uttered no battle cry as they descended on the sleeping village spreading fire as they went. _

_Lee woke with stinging eyes and coughing. The acrid smoke billowing ink on ink inside the darkened house. He crawled frightened and blinded from his bed calling for his parents. It was a small house and they always could hear him, they always came right away when he had nightmares. There was no answer, only more smoke to scald his lungs. With mounting terror he crawled on hands and knees towards the bedroom door, trying to filter the smoke with one hand. He yelled for them again, and heard a dragging thumping scuffle beyond the door. The wood was warm against his hands and the handle burned. But he heard his mothers voice on the other side. Something had caught the door, it would open only a few inches and from the crack black smoke and scalding heat billowed in. He could hear his mother and she was screaming, crying. She needed help. He threw his little body against the door with panic and confusion biting white around his brain. And again. And again. The door struggled open inch by inch until he'd made a space large enough to squeeze through. The blast of heat was incredible and he smelt his hair singe. Stumbling out of his room he fell over the pair of legs attached to the body that had leant against the door to keep him in, and his eyes followed up the body to the face of his father, eyes wide and dull and blood and foam dripping from his chin. He didn't scream, just lay sprawled across his father legs gapping and paralyzed. Then a blank of wood fell flaming from the ceiling and cracked on the ground beside him and showered them in red hot shrapnel and his clothes and his fathers clothes started to burn. Now he leapt up shouting in pain and terror and ran in the firelight down the hall to the kitchen and tore off the burning sleeve and stamped it out and didn't notice the blisters and boiled flesh there because he could see his mother and a man he did not know. She was bent over the table with tears streaming and he face shoved hard into the wood and her nightgown pulled up and her arms twisted behind her. Lees screams of pain and fear became rage. Blindly he charged the man and sunk his teeth into his arm until his mouth filled with copper and scratched and clawed and hung on with all his little strength. The man cursed and jerked back and tried to shake him off and kicked him. In the corner of his vision he saw his mother scrabble at a drawer and turn. The man fell to the ground taking Lee with him jerking and gurgling with a knife in his throat, dark arterial blood splattering and sizzling in the spreading flames. His mother seized him and they ran._

_They ran out into a whirlwind of flame and pounding hooves and blood and panic. Over his mothers shoulder he saw a woman with a baby. A rider behind her. A flash of steel and her head fell to the side and her body dropped with her infant wailing beneath her. Some of the villagers tried to fight, most ran blindly past the burning homes into the night. They hit the safety of the dark and kept going until he could hear his mothers breath ragged and unsteady and she stumbled. Over her shoulder there were torch lights, and the thundering of horses not far away._

Lee threw himself awake and out of the bed. He caught his head against the night stand and landed with a flailing thud and the blankets on the wood floor. Head reeling, he staggered to the bathroom with a 

hand clamped over his mouth. He fumbled the light switch and collapsed retching violently. When he finally could breathe again he flushed the toilet and looked up at the sound of a voice.

"You okay babe? What is it?" His lover stood leaning in the doorway, hair mussed and dark eyes cloudy with sleep he was trying to rub out.

"I'm fine. Go back to bed."

"You're bleeding…" The older boy's brow creased with concern and he started into the bathroom, hand automatically reaching for the first aid kit above the sink. Lee lurched to his feet with a grimace.

"I said I'm fine!" He shoved the other boy out with more force than he'd intended, sending him sprawling on the floor. The lock clicked shut. He sank shakily back to the floor with his head in his hands, breathing ragged. Outside, Kankuro was pounding on the door, voice edged with worry and confusion.

"Lee! Open the door Lee! What the hell, what's going on!?"

"It's nothing. Just a nightmare. Go back to bed."

"Lee…"

"I'm fine."


End file.
